The profit of the earth
Subtitle: the global seeds of American agriculture
By: Courtney Fullilove
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 280
ISBN-13: 9780226454863
Subjects: Wheat; Plant introduction; Seed industry and trade; Seeds; Breeding; Harvesting; Plant diversity conservation; History
Description: Organized into three thematic parts, The Profit of the Earth is a narrative history of the collection, circulation, and preservation of seeds. Fullilove begins with the political economy of agricultural improvement, recovering the efforts of the US Patent Office and the nascent US Department of Agriculture to import seeds and cuttings for free distribution to American farmers. She then turns to immigrant agricultural knowledge, exploring how public and private institutions attempting to boost midwestern wheat yields drew on the resources of willing and unwilling settlers. Last, she explores the impact of these cereal monocultures on biocultural diversity, chronicling a fin-de-siècle Ohio pharmacist's attempt to source Purple Coneflower from the diminishing prairie. Through these captivating narratives of improvisation, appropriation, and loss, Fullilove explores contradictions between ideologies of property rights and common use that persist in national and international development - ultimately challenging readers to rethink fantasies of global agriculture's past and future.--AMAZON.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Prologue: in the field; title: Field notes. "Green revolutions": hunting turkey wheat; title: pt. 1. Collection: the political culture of seeds; title: The museum of seeds; title: Seed sharing in the Patent Office; title: Failures of tea cultivation in the American South; title: Field notes. "Local knowledge": what the pastoralist knew; title: pt. 2. Migration: wheat culture and immigrant agricultural knowledge; title: For amber waves of grain; title: Spacious skies and economies of scale; title: Field notes. "Indigenous knowledge": diversity and endangerment; title: pt. 3. Preservation: indigenous plants and the preservation of biocultural diversity; title: Elk's weed on the prairie; title: The allegory of the cave in Kentucky; title: Writing on the seed; title: Epilogue: in the gene bank.